RockStat puts Rockford on track to be trustworthy

Saturday

Jan 31, 2009 at 12:01 AMJan 31, 2009 at 6:24 AM

“And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account — to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day — because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.”

— President Barack Obama, excerpt from inaugural address, Jan. 20

Larry Morrissey

“And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account — to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day — because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.”

— President Barack Obama, excerpt from inaugural address, Jan. 20

I had the honor of attending President Barack Obama’s inauguration and heard the president make this challenge. Our president has called for accountable, transparent and effective government. In a time of crisis, with job losses mounting, we must accept this challenge and do the hard work necessary to achieve excellence and turn around the fortunes of our city.

Our work to reform local government through transparent, accountable decision making has been through our “RockStat” management program. RockStat is our data-driven approach to making decisions and deploying our resources. It’s a major change in how we do business. We opened up our RockStat meetings this year to the general public and published our analysis on our city’s Web site to provide our citizens the transparent and accountable government of which the president speaks. This is our constant check on delivering excellence even when reform means we have to cut labor costs as illustrated in our recent City Council debate on staffing for police and fire services.

For us to effectively balance our $5 million deficit and run the city like a business, we must look at all aspects of our operations. We simply can’t ignore our city’s two largest operations that amount to roughly 70 percent of our general fund budget. Local homeowners and businesses have had to make the same types of tough decisions. The good news is that through our RockStat efforts, we can make needed cuts while continuing to improve public safety through better use of our resources.

The recent analysis provided by consultant Alex Weiss, to our City Council demonstrates that better deployment of police personnel can help make dramatic cuts in overtime costs while improving service. In 1993, we switched to a 10-hour shift from an eight-hour shift and we applied standards requiring the same manning of patrol officers for every hour of every day regardless of actual calls for service. Consequently, we had more officers than we needed at certain hours, not enough officers at other hours, and our overtime costs skyrocketed. We are bargaining with the union now to make needed changes in our contract to provide more officers when our citizens need them and at a lower cost.

Through our RockStat efforts, we’re also performing this type of rigorous analysis of our Fire Department. Thus, we have to examine questions like: why we are the only community in the region and only community among comparable communities in Illinois to place four people on an engine company?

Across the U.S., 70 percent of all full-time fire departments surveyed through the International City/County Management Association use less than four. The use of a smaller firefighting crew corresponds with the steady decline in fire calls compared with a sharp increase in ambulance runs across the country. In fact, 80 percent of Rockford’s calls are for ambulance service and not fire.

We can be just as safe with three on an engine by rigorously monitoring our work and sharing responsibility with our citizens. We used three on an engine until the late 1990s, and the Insurance Services Office did not rate our risk level differently when we went to four. In fact, we currently use three to a crew on many of our engines when personnel are involved in training, which happens almost every week. At every fire, we have multiple companies respond, bringing on scene 18-25 firefighters.

The Fire Prevention Division of our department has done an excellent job in putting smoke detectors and carbon monoxide monitors in the hands of our residents. These are tools that have long been credited with reducing the risk of fire and fire-related injuries in our city and allowed us to better manage fire risk. In fact, the majority of our own firefighters manage an even greater risk in their own homes as 58 percent of our firefighters actually live outside Rockford in surrounding communities where homes and families are protected by volunteer or part-time departments.

Obviously, when balancing the concerns of having a strong fire department, strong schools and fair taxes, many have found that the balance tips in favor of surrounding communities where the schools rate better and the taxes are lower even though they know we have the best fire service.

In reviewing all aspects of our city operations, we cannot avoid the imperative to balance our budget, and logic compels us to correctly match our resources to our needs. We are in the trenches right now fighting through the very challenge President Obama has made for us to transform the way we do business. I thank all of our staff and our citizens as we tackle this effort during tough times, and I look forward to continued ideas on improving our operations.

Larry Morrissey is mayor of Rockford.

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